Fired my AI agent last week. "Bang!" Not because it was evil or trying to take over my computer. I fired it because it was useless.
Not world-ending useless. Useless like a Roomba stuck on a sock for 45 minutes, beeping softly while you question spending $400 on a disc that can't handle laundry.
Turns out I'm not alone. AI strategist Sol Rashidi told Business Insider she fired half her AI agents after becoming a "botsitter" — someone who spends more time feeding context and fixing errors than actually working. A Glean report found white-collar workers spend 6.4 hours a week babysitting AI . That's nearly a full workday asking a robot why it booked a meeting with your dead grandmother.
The Gadget Graveyard
Remember the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin? Those sleek devices that were going to replace your phone? Both dead. Discontinued.
Tony Fadell — the guy who made the iPod — explained why they flopped. At MIT, he said these companies built products around a tech demo, not an actual problem. "It was just interesting technology for geeks," he said. "You're like, 'Okay, that's neat, but it doesn't really apply to my life'".
The Humane Pin cost $699 plus $24 a month. For that price, you could hire a real assistant for a week. Or buy a phone that does everything the Pin did, except it works.
The AI Menu Nightmare
Want to see useless AI in the wild? Go to a restaurant that used AI for its menu photos.
TikTok calls them "AI slop menus." One shrimp dish looked like monsters from an HP Lovecraft story. A bagel looked like cobwebs. Spaghetti looked like Play-Doh.Link
Your brain sees food that's almost right but not quite, and screams "this will make you sick." Your brain is probably right.
Worst part? If a restaurant uses fake pictures of food they've never made, what's happening in the kitchen? The AI menu is a red flag. It says: "We care more about saving $50 on a photographer than whether you enjoy your meal."
The Silent Houseguest
Chrome keeps quietly downloading a 4GB AI model onto people's computers. No prompt. No notification. Delete it, and it comes back. Sorry, Chrome, using you to write this.
Google says it's for scam detection. But the headline AI feature — the "AI Mode" pill in the address bar — doesn't even use it. Those queries go to Google's servers anyway.Link
So you're paying the storage cost of a local AI while the main feature still sends everything to the cloud. It's like a houseguest who lets themselves in, eats your snacks, then announces they're ordering pizza anyway.
So What's the Point?
I'm not anti-AI. I use it. The problem isn't the tech. It's the assumption that more AI is automatically better. Every product needs an AI layer. Every task should be automated.
Fadell said it well: "You have to really understand what pain you're trying to solve." That's product design 101. Somehow we forgot to ask it.
The rise of useless AI isn't a tech failure. It's a failure of imagination — not bothering to ask whether anyone actually wants the thing you're building.
Until then, I'll keep firing my agents. One by one. Until I find one that doesn't need a babysitter.
Not holding my breath.